Over the past several months I have kept my eye on this game due to the positive feedback it has received. I have come close to buying it a couple of times, but because of this thread I have finally buckled and bought the game. Looking forward to trying it out.

Over the past several months I have kept my eye on this game due to the positive feedback it has received. I have come close to buying it a couple of times, but because of this thread I have finally buckled and bought the game. Looking forward to trying it out.

Couldn't resist...picked it while still on sale on Steam. It is addictive with that 'just one more turn' feel to it. Only an hour and a half into my first campaign. It is a lot like the old Masters of Magic game. I'm still peeling away the layers of depth so I can't make any final conclusions. But it sure is fun to play.

It IS similar to MoM..in a good way!

General play tips:

Development of a cities resources and productions is almost exponential, rather than linear. This is HUGE.

I have a sea hex with no special resource. I get 200 fish per turn. Slap on a dock? add 300. Slap on a shipyard? add 300. Add a fishing vessel? Add 500. Add in a fish resource square? add 1600. Add in THREE MORE CITIZENS? Total of 8000+ food..from one square!

This works the same for resources. Cities start with ten. If you have a clam resource, that's six by itself...and four citizens on that square give you 10 + 24 for the clams. That's a lot of clams!

When you army attacks a lair or creature location, they get from 1 to a lot of resources as loot. Rinse, repeat. You might be out for many battles. Each of your army figures can hold 100 resources. Say your three man army has filled up, with 300 resources. Look at all your cities, and review which of them has more production capacity than resource generation capacity.

For example... 10 resources, 30 production. If you give them an additional 300 resources, they can use an extra 20 per turn, for the 15 turns until the windfall of resources is used up. If you use those twenty turns to increase your resource production, even better.

I tend to have one production center on each "end" of my civilization..the one place I dump my resource loot to. These locations are where I have all of the major production facilities...and the ones that can use the extra resources in a huge burst of building.

There are some trade cities that can generate 4,000 gold per turn...just a massive amount.

One thing that I like, a LOT...is that settler generation is fixed. For me, it is 125 settler generation points per turn, and 15,000 needed to crank out a new settler. This is done, EVEN IF YOU ARE BUILDING SOMETHING ELSE!!!! Your civ "pulses" every 120 turns. I currently have eight cities. In 120 turns, I will have 16. In 120 turns after that, I will have 32. The limit I have on the number of cities in my empire is ...wait for it... TEN THOUSAND.

The parameters I set for the number of hexes, for this game, is 400 x 400. This is one hundred and sixty thousand hexes. Read that again. I don't know what the theoretical maximum is...but I learned something. There is a base number of a new lair to form, and a base number for each lair to send out a war party. After 400 turns, I am waiting up to a minute for these creatures to take their turn. I have explored perhaps a 50 x 40 area, with eight cities. This is 4,000 hexes, or 2.5% of the map. I cannot imagine how long it is going to take this game to play, and how long it will take to tame the wild. As I push back the fog of war, there are lairs every 2 or 3 squares. They get stronger over time, as well. Their initial strength is also a parameter you can set, as is their frequency.

I will start again, with the dead lowest settings for lair frequency, strength, and expansion. It's going to be hard enough as it is.

Strong recommendation from me. I believe that I have played almost every 4x game ever made..and this one really works for me. There are layers of depth that I am continuing to discover.

Each city can have a "fat cross" of 2 hexes in each direction, up to 6! Can you imagine how vast that city can become, with a six hex radius? This means no city can be founded unless it is 13 hexes away..and NO city can be founded if there is a lair within it's initial build radius.

Couldn't resist...picked it while still on sale on Steam. It is addictive with that 'just one more turn' feel to it. Only an hour and a half into my first campaign. It is a lot like the old Masters of Magic game. I'm still peeling away the layers of depth so I can't make any final conclusions. But it sure is fun to play.

It IS similar to MoM..in a good way!

General play tips:

Development of a cities resources and productions is almost exponential, rather than linear. This is HUGE.

I have a sea hex with no special resource. I get 200 fish per turn. Slap on a dock? add 300. Slap on a shipyard? add 300. Add a fishing vessel? Add 500. Add in a fish resource square? add 1600. Add in THREE MORE CITIZENS? Total of 8000+ food..from one square!

This works the same for resources. Cities start with ten. If you have a clam resource, that's six by itself...and four citizens on that square give you 10 + 24 for the clams. That's a lot of clams!

When you army attacks a lair or creature location, they get from 1 to a lot of resources as loot. Rinse, repeat. You might be out for many battles. Each of your army figures can hold 100 resources. Say your three man army has filled up, with 300 resources. Look at all your cities, and review which of them has more production capacity than resource generation capacity.

For example... 10 resources, 30 production. If you give them an additional 300 resources, they can use an extra 20 per turn, for the 15 turns until the windfall of resources is used up. If you use those twenty turns to increase your resource production, even better.

I tend to have one production center on each "end" of my civilization..the one place I dump my resource loot to. These locations are where I have all of the major production facilities...and the ones that can use the extra resources in a huge burst of building.

There are some trade cities that can generate 4,000 gold per turn...just a massive amount.

One thing that I like, a LOT...is that settler generation is fixed. For me, it is 125 settler generation points per turn, and 15,000 needed to crank out a new settler. This is done, EVEN IF YOU ARE BUILDING SOMETHING ELSE!!!! Your civ "pulses" every 120 turns. I currently have eight cities. In 120 turns, I will have 16. In 120 turns after that, I will have 32. The limit I have on the number of cities in my empire is ...wait for it... TEN THOUSAND.

The parameters I set for the number of hexes, for this game, is 400 x 400. This is one hundred and sixty thousand hexes. Read that again. I don't know what the theoretical maximum is...but I learned something. There is a base number of a new lair to form, and a base number for each lair to send out a war party. After 400 turns, I am waiting up to a minute for these creatures to take their turn. I have explored perhaps a 50 x 40 area, with eight cities. This is 4,000 hexes, or 2.5% of the map. I cannot imagine how long it is going to take this game to play, and how long it will take to tame the wild. As I push back the fog of war, there are lairs every 2 or 3 squares. They get stronger over time, as well. Their initial strength is also a parameter you can set, as is their frequency.

I will start again, with the dead lowest settings for lair frequency, strength, and expansion. It's going to be hard enough as it is.

Strong recommendation from me. I believe that I have played almost every 4x game ever made..and this one really works for me. There are layers of depth that I am continuing to discover.

Each city can have a "fat cross" of 2 hexes in each direction, up to 6! Can you imagine how vast that city can become, with a six hex radius? This means no city can be founded unless it is 13 hexes away..and NO city can be founded if there is a lair within it's initial build radius.

Actually I am playing with a city radius of 8 on a 300x300 map so 8 is the maximum. ;-)

I think the maximum map size is 750x750 and it would take years lol. I tried 500 and it was way too much. 300 seems to be the biggest I would want to play but that is even too big for a lot of folks. 100 max is standard. And yeah I had to adjust the lairs myself according to the map size. Never played a game more customizable or with more options. Amazing! Any play style is possible.

Strongly encourage you all to tone done the percent frequency of lairs, and their initial strength. For a massive map, they'll just continue to grow, and grow, and grow.

With six enemy to a stack, and six for me, there were some stacks that were literally impossible for me to win. Six BIG dragons.

So, with that in mind, I reset the parameters for my most recent game. Max six for AI, max in a stack for me? 10. Heh heh heh. Makes it a big fairer.

ALSO..and this is significant, the very first civic upgrade you MUST research is the one that enables you to upgrade your farms...followed by the road. You can have one square generate 4,000 food, very early in the game.

ALSO..if you can find a banana, get on it. The amount of food for a banana square is stupid high...FAR higher than a wheat symbol, or even a fish.

Guys, I'm not sure, but I think Dennis just told us to jump on his banana?

Awesome stuff. I've been deep in a couple campaigns of Eador: Lost Horizons for the last few months, but I'm on the verge of losing to that damn Barbarian Lord, trying to defend my home shard, which means GAME OVER, dude. I might just switch over to Deity Empires at some point soon.

I kinda like a campaign game that has to be played in Iron Man mode, where you get a few restarts sometimes (at a significant cost), but there are some occasions where your back is to the wall and all you can do is play the hand your dealt! It's a more fatalistic world view, but as long as the play experience is fun, I'm good with that in my gaming...

Dennis, I appreciate the breakdown of Alignments and Races. That does sound like it'd add a lot to replay. A few follow-up questions, as I'm really intrigued by everything I'm hearing here:

Do the different races have totally different units, one unique unit (e.g., a Gnome Panzer?), or just the same units but with different bonuses (similar to the original MoM)?

How much game customization is offered in the set-up? (From earlier posts, it sounds like you can adjust neutral monsters and lairs up or down, which is awesome. For example, could I play a race of Northmen in a world otherwise surrounded by Evil gods and races, or does it all get randomized. I see lots of map customization options, but that's the only screen I've seen.

Are there legitimately different ways to play, or are there a handful of units who are overpowered, so it's about a race to get to them, or have the Devs been pretty good about nerfing and balancing? (e.g., the post about giving an Immortality Core to a high-level wizard and just Fireball spamming: Sounds like fun the first time, but I've already done the overpowered combo in MoM (e.g., Adamantium-enhanced Hammerhands if you're a Dwarf, Paladin-spam backed by a pair of Wizards if you're a High Man, etc.)

Is there a "Summon Vorpal Bunny" spell available?

This one is looking like it might be on the Father's Day request list!

Strongly encourage you all to tone done the percent frequency of lairs, and their initial strength. For a massive map, they'll just continue to grow, and grow, and grow.

With six enemy to a stack, and six for me, there were some stacks that were literally impossible for me to win. Six BIG dragons.

So, with that in mind, I reset the parameters for my most recent game. Max six for AI, max in a stack for me? 10. Heh heh heh. Makes it a big fairer.

ALSO..and this is significant, the very first civic upgrade you MUST research is the one that enables you to upgrade your farms...followed by the road. You can have one square generate 4,000 food, very early in the game.

ALSO..if you can find a banana, get on it. The amount of food for a banana square is stupid high...FAR higher than a wheat symbol, or even a fish.

Exactly the bigger the map the more you need to tone down and spread out lairs. Also the bigger the map the harder your AI opponents will be with more room to expand. I play on normal on a 300X300 map and the other AI's are much stronger than me.

Do the different races have totally different units, one unique unit (e.g., a Gnome Panzer?), or just the same units but with different bonuses (similar to the original MoM)?

Yes. The elves have archers, the Orcs have Blood Orc Warriors, etc. Each unit has its own abilities, and it the case of casters, their own individual spells.

How much game customization is offered in the set-up? (From earlier posts, it sounds like you can adjust neutral monsters and lairs up or down, which is awesome. For example, could I play a race of Northmen in a world otherwise surrounded by Evil gods and races, or does it all get randomized. I see lots of map customization options, but that's the only screen I've seen.

You have the ability to set the number of AI players, as well as their alignment, as well as their type, or to leave them all random. You can play as "Good" Dwarves, and play against 15 Orc tribes if you wish.

Are there legitimately different ways to play, or are there a handful of units who are overpowered, so it's about a race to get to them, or have the Devs been pretty good about nerfing and balancing? (e.g., the post about giving an Immortality Core to a high-level wizard and just Fireball spamming: Sounds like fun the first time, but I've already done the overpowered combo in MoM (e.g., Adamantium-enhanced Hammerhands if you're a Dwarf, Paladin-spam backed by a pair of Wizards if you're a High Man, etc.)

I have only played about 40 hours. Occasionally, there are "Hero" units available, which are quite strong. But..mitigated by that there is just one unit in the stack, for hit points. You may see a hero with 50 hit points..with another unit having six figures with eight damage points each. Hero units can be much more squishy.

Is there a "Summon Vorpal Bunny" spell available?

This one is looking like it might be on the Father's Day request list!

I strongly recommend this game...the more I play, the more depth I discover. The cities I have are developing exponentially, not linearly...and I have cities with over 100,000 citizens. I have as many as four citizens on a square, doing the development actions. Instead of one citizen for 400 food...I have FOUR citizens, with a road, with TEN LEVELS of development. Each level doesn't increase just the base level of food, but it also adds a PERCENTAGE increase. This is how you go from 400 to 16,000 food for ONE SQUARE. Just amazing, but it works. Cities of 100,000 don't increase 100 peeps a turn, we're talking close to a thousand peeps per turn.

I am getting ready to "pulse" out another eight cities. I have 43% of all the population in the world. When it gets to 60%, I will win. I only had six total empires for my 300 x 300 hex map. Next game, I will start with 16 civs. I am on turn 400 or so, and will probably win around turn 1000.

I'll just add to the comments now that I have over 10 hours of gameplay into Deity Empires. It's a wonderfully addictive game and very rewarding when you get a couple of cities to be growth and production powerhouses.

From what little I've played I can honestly say that many of the features and gameplay options are not there for filler or fluff. An astute player can leverage all of these mechanics to dominate and it feels so good.

Logged

Forgive me my old friend. But I must use all my experience...to get home.

I'll just add to the comments now that I have over 10 hours of gameplay into Deity Empires. It's a wonderfully addictive game and very rewarding when you get a couple of cities to be growth and production powerhouses.

From what little I've played I can honestly say that many of the features and gameplay options are not there for filler or fluff. An astute player can leverage all of these mechanics to dominate and it feels so good.

There are a very large number of levers to move in this game. I tend to play the economic card, and just win by pure population pressure. In this game, you can toggle the parameter that allows you to win if you have 60% of the population. The AI builds reasonably quickly, but I am a BEAST at creating the optimum city. Screw production, get the people, and production will take care of itself.